If you sell thinking — creative, strategic, educational or otherwise — we can help turn your thought capital into new business connections by creating compelling content and conversations. Here are a few examples (anonymized for our clients’ privacy).
How to create thought leadership content for executives that creates new business relationships.
Say you’ve founded an agency and started to build a successful business. Now, how do you create a new business pipeline beyond your own contacts? How do you get more widely recognized as leading thinkers that prospects are happy to take a call from, and actually want to talk to? One powerful option: create meaningful industry conversations and invite prospects to join in.
That’s what we did with the leaders at a B2B-focused brand activation firm. We created a regular column in a brand-focused magazine for its founder and CEO. Every month we helped him interview a different Chief Marketing Officer at a potential B2B client about a key branding topic, showcasing both their expertise and his.
Not only did these interviews produce compelling content, they also initiated new business relationships face-to-face
Not only did this produce compelling content in multiple formats (we created interview videos along with the articles), it also provided the opportunity to initiate relationships with prospects face-to-face. In at least one instance, it restarted a relationship with a former client, leading to new work.
In addition, we regularly interviewed the CEO and other agency leaders to create bylined articles that appeared in prospect-relevant publications and on the firm’s blog.
How to improve the content output, impact and opportunities for your leadership team.
Perhaps you, like the leaders at a small, strategic brand consultancy we worked with, are more than capable of creating your own content, but simply don’t have the time. How do you get your thinking out to the wider world with the consistency required to make a real impact? You work with Lead the Conversation.
In this case, we again employed interviewing as our methodology, but the interviewees were the clients. Teeing up questions for them in advance and then interviewing them on video produced a more consistent stream of content with a minimal time commitment from the firm’s leaders. The process also yielded content with their authentic voices and thoughts – more akin to co-writing than ghostwriting.
We produced a consistent stream of content with a minimal time commitment from the firm’s leadership.
In addition to writing aritcles for their website, we secured a regular contributor position at a C-Suite-targeted publication for one partner, and provided articles for the other that appeared in a branding-oriented publication. We also produced “content promos,” videos encapsulating the essence of an article that could used on LinkedIn to re-activate and energize their existing network of contacts.
Perhaps best of all, by expanding their industry presence via thought leadership content we answered the question, “How do we get speaking opportunities?” We secured a featured presentation for them (alongside a key client) at a major branding conference. The combined exposure is now leading to organic invitations to be interviewed on industry podcasts.
How one college creates a unique brand voice by using the actual voices of its thought-leader faculty.
So, you’re in charge of marketing and/or admissions at a college or university. You’d like to use the wealth of thought capital that’s represented in your faculty — but they just don’t have time to contribute. How do you get your people, your most compelling “products,” out in front of your prospective students in a genuine way that puts little to no burden upon your professors? Once again, start with the expert interviewing at Lead the Conversation.
Our interview-based articles effectively leveraged the faculty’s thought capital while requiring very little of their time.
For a health sciences college in the eastern U.S, we regularly interviewed faculty and students on key topics. We provided discussion outlines in advance (as we do with all clients), asked for just a half hour of an interviewee’s time, and after a Zoom interview ended up with articles and audio that not only communicate key facts but convincingly share the college’s brand voice and personality.
Lead the Conversation provides a practical way to develop authentic thought leadership content for busy executives. We also help the C-Suite create and lead industry conversations, to which they can invite other leaders, turning prospects into relationships
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We help top executives create:
Interview series
Videos
Bylined articles
Blog posts
All forms of content